


Another Girl's Paradise

by shretl (girlundone)



Series: A Girl Needs A Gun These Days [7]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Adoption, F/M, Infertility, Interspecies Relationship, Jewish Holidays, Jewish Shepard, Mental Health Issues, Post-War, Sexual Content, Surrogacy, biologically incompatible, mixed marriage, physical health issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:49:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26284468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlundone/pseuds/shretl
Summary: Shepard has spent her life from one fight to the next, but the path for motherhood might be the toughest battle she has ever faced.A story of the road to parenthood, told in vignettes.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Series: A Girl Needs A Gun These Days [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1180568
Comments: 73
Kudos: 65





	1. Artwork

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting a WIP and not a finished work. As such, updates will not be weekly. I hope to finish by the new year, but I am also dealing with active Crohn's and going back to school, not to mention the toll the pandemic has taken on our lives. Please be patient! I do promise this story will not be left unfinished!
> 
> All work beta'd by the wonderful and generous [Some_Writer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Some_Writer/pseuds/Some_Writer)

Art by the amazing [Autodisco](%E2%80%9C)


	2. Pretend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unfortunate moment leads to a vital discussion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains sexual content and discussions of wanting a child. Reader discretion is advised.

“Don’t stop,” she breathed.

Garrus liked patterns and plans. He liked order and he liked his preferences met. He liked Shepard to come first. But she could tell by the way his mandibles were pinched tightly to his face and his legs trembled with strain that he was so, so close. It made her feel powerful, coveted in a way she couldn’t express in words, to cause him to lose control. As though he couldn’t contain his need for her. As though she would always be the absolute object of desire to him.

Sometimes, she worried she was not. She knew that he loved her and that their love had always extended beyond mere physical attraction. It was a love borne out of friendship and trust that grew into unquenchable ardour and everlasting adoration. Yet still, she was sometimes very consciously aware that she wasn’t a turian. That she was no longer the sculpted, battle-hewn soldier he met a decade ago. That there were things she couldn’t give him.

“Pretend we’re making a baby.”

He took a shuddering breath to master himself but the words—whether the shock of them or the idea—were too much and he finished with a stifled gasp and thrum of subvocals.

Shepard had patterns, too. She liked to linger, after. The weight and warmth of him atop of her was more satisfying and comforting than any fleeting indulgence in the galaxy. But now she turned over quickly, drawing up the damp sheets as a secure barrier between them.

Garrus collapsed on his back beside her, jarring the mattress and briefly jostling her view of the dusky aquamarine wall.

She didn’t want to die, nor did she want the ground to open up and swallow her, having experienced both scenarios and neither having favourable outcomes. However, she did wish she could disappear, perhaps with the aid of a tactical cloak, and skip over the next several conversations with her husband.

Her heart thudded relentlessly in her ears, but his breathing beside her evened out. She hoped against hope he had fallen asleep, but she doubted it. Curiosity killed the cat and tempted Garrus more than the proverbial apple.

It was a testament to their relationship that despite how miserable and embarrassed she was in those moments, a loosening of the uncomfortable tension in her shoulders and reconstructed spine spread through her as Garrus turned to the stiff line of her back and wrapped his arms around her. Unconsciously, she let out the breath she had been holding.

But what he said surprised her. “Did you want to be adopted? After?”

A crush of images obscured her thoughts, as it always did when reminded of those days, months, years after her father died. The solicitous, harried, overworked cops. The scattered, disillusioned, unsympathetic social worker. Her father’s friends, with their reassurances and heavy food and spending credits and broken promises. The group home on Sullivan Street. The neglect, the abuse, the despair. The Reds and hotel bars and too much makeup and alleyway meetings with Detective Glassey. Money and information changing hands, faster than a mass relay, and fists falling upon her like a meteor shower. 

“No.” She swallowed. Her throat felt dry.

His solid, warm bulk enveloped her, despite all those sharp angles she had come to love, but it didn’t diffuse his surprise. “Really? Why not?”

She was glad she had chosen such a soothing colour for the walls, but it wasn’t the same as a glittering sky of a megatropolis. Starshine was a replacement that suited her, but it wasn’t to be found on the Citadel, either. She contented herself with the view of the Kithoi skyline from their living room most days and if she closed her eyes, she could see it behind her lids now. “It would have been a betrayal.”

Garrus shifted subtly against her back. He didn’t understand. And she didn’t expect him to, nor did she want him to, not exactly. Garrus came from a reasonably happy home, filled only with the complaints and grievances a well-loved child with over-involved parents could warrant. And no matter how welcoming, how inclusive Castis and Solana were—and they were very much so indeed—Shepard still felt like an outsider in that secure and loving family unit. 

“How do you figure that?” 

He asked the question that she didn’t know how to answer. For though Garrus now allowed grey into his vision of the galaxy, it was still very hard to make him see it at first glance. Shepard couldn’t begin to explain her father to her husband. To Garrus, he was a criminal who got what was coming to him, if not what he deserved. And yes, it was a shame, but he shouldn’t have been involved in anything crooked to begin with. But Shepard understood things that Garrus perhaps did not. That Ari Shepard’s crime spilled no blood and deserved none in return. That it was business among a family of thieves and families should protect one another. That everyone crosses lines within their lives and who was to judge whether washing credits was any worse than jaywalking or filching premium vid channels. 

She thought of the little hamsa necklace she had always worn until her descent into Alchera’s atmosphere obliterated the last thing she had from her father. Ill-gained but much loved. Her hand went to the delicate labradorite necklace always around her throat now. Both given to her by men she loved. Men who loved her. Men who couldn’t possibly understand one and other. 

“He was my father. I couldn’t have another.”

Garrus didn’t have a response to that, but he still answered by pressing his mouthplates to the back of her head. Shepard reached for his hand on her waist and knit their fingers together. “I worry, about getting an older kid. That they would resent us for not being the parents they remember. And then I feel terrible, because there are so many who need homes. Who want homes and parents. Who we could love and support and raise to love us in return.”

The warmth of him, the rise and fall of his carapace, were just as reassuring as his teasing words. “You don’t have to save the entire galaxy. Remember, you already did that once.”

It earned him a wistful little smile that she knew he could just barely make out over her shoulder, beyond her tangled hair. But it soon disappeared and she worried her thumb against his. “Is it wrong? To want a baby instead?”

Garrus, in a fit of playful movements, captured her hand against her own waist and pulled her tightly against him. “As opposed to another krogan?”

But she squirmed in an anxious, dismissive movement. Normally, she enjoyed his teasing and posturing. Yet having shared these private thoughts, having laid herself bare, she felt the urgent need to be taken seriously. “Garrus, please.”

As though contrite, he laid his mandible against her head. It tickled her, not unpleasantly, as he spoke. His normally boisterous voice was subdued. “No. It’s not wrong. I want it, too.” There was a pause, though it was laden with unspoken thoughts that finally were voiced in unusually uncertain subvocals. “Neither of us are what we were before the war. I wonder if we could take on a kid with problems of their own. I couldn’t live with myself if I failed my own kid.”

Her heart plunged with sickening swiftness. She felt as though she were reaching across a wide expanse of space, fruitlessly clutching at a star. She felt as though she were underwater, snatching at bubbles of air. “I just wish…”

His head turned, unaware of the curls caught in his mandible, shut eyes further shielded from futility by her hair. “Shepard…” His subvocals were steeped in helplessness. 

She sighed and closed her own eyes, allowing herself to soak up the comfort of his arms even as she saw herself, in her mind’s eye, stretch out her own arms toward the ungraspable once more. “I know. I just wish.”


	3. Squabble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A petty argument; an awakening.

Garrus had left the apartment in a foul mood that morning and a long day at work followed by a crowded, delayed Rapid Transit shuttle ride back home had done little to improve it.

It started as a tiny squabble. Shepard dropped a bobby pin as she did her hair that morning and, rather than risking the motion to bend and pick it up, she surreptitiously kicked it under the dresser. Or so she thought. He saw her, damn him, his sniper’s vision, and ever-present visor. First, he had complained about how much it hurt to step on ‘those things.’ Then he had the temerity to admonish her for not asking for help. 

Shepard did not like to be reminded that she needed to ask for assistance to do such little tasks as picking up errant bobby pins from the floor. Needless to say, she was not in a very agreeable mindset—one could say she was even cold—when he voiced his next grievance. Unloading the dish sanitizer before he left for work, he scolded her for the way she had inserted the bowls the night before.

“If you put them at that angle, they won’t get clean. I’ve told you that before, Shepard.” His vocals flanged with annoyance as he tipped dirty water out of the bowls and shoved them back in their appointed slots with not a little bit of aggravated force.

“If we got the other set, they wouldn’t need to be put in at an angle to begin with,” she had shot back in glacial tones, arms crossed defiantly against her chest. After all, she didn’t even like the bowls in question.

And then they had an old argument about who picked out the dishware in the first place. 

Garrus did. He wanted the bigger bowls. 

But after a few hours and a long, late lunch with select members of the volus Protectorate over the proposal of an elcor Council seat, Shepard considered the tiff forgotten. 

And perhaps her husband would have too if ‘some bastard’ of an unexpressed species hopped up on Hallex hadn’t spilled half of his equally indeterminate ‘crappy drink’ on him midway through the commute home. As it was, Garrus trudged through the door that night in the kind of temperament only the greasiest takeout and coldest beer could possibly improve. 

Shepard placed the order before he even came out of the shower. 

It was much later now, nearly time for bed, and Garrus was still nursing his second beer, because he did have work tomorrow after all, while deeply engrossed in a marathon of Citadel Suites. They were moving on to his favourite part— bathroom renovation. 

Shepard wasn’t really paying attention to the vidscreen or the datapad in her hands. Convincing the populace that the elcor earned and deserved a Council seat was proving harder than she expected. The krogan won theirs through their audacious prowess during the Reaper War and the volus because of their contributions to the galactic economy. The elcor, with their stilted speech and lumbering movements were seen as a universal punchline, perhaps moreso than the volus because they hadn’t the monetary capital to offset their physical appearance. The volus Protectorate was FAIR’s, the Federation for All-Inclusive Representation, only current ally but they were too new to the scene and didn’t carry the weight to sway any other members of the Council, despite their relationship with the Hierarchy. 

She pushed the datapad away with a sigh. It wasn’t a problem she could solve tonight, but the injustice of the situation, the fact that the elcor has made significant contributions to the galactic community before and during the war, weighed heavily on her with impatient energy to fix the inequality immediately. Garrus, upon hearing the frustration in her breath, not to mention the scattered commentary of impassioned words she had peppered throughout their conversations on the subject, put his free hand in her hair and drew her head to his cowl. 

Shepard hadn’t been too worried, but it still felt nice to be reconciled after that morning’s skirmishes. It was a silent language they often shared, more than merely nods and glances on an open battlefield. She and Garrus understood one and other, from each of their faults and weaknesses to their strengths and virtues. She knew her unwillingness to ask for help irritated him, but she also knew he understood. He wasn’t too good at asking for it, either. She had been stubborn and he had been impatient. They both forgave each other in a quiet gesture of mutual devotion and acceptance. 

Even if he had chosen those bowls. 

It was one of life’s greatest pleasures, she thought, to have his talons in her hair as she breathed in the overwarm metallic scent of him, luxuriating in the closeness of his solid body, the heat of his plates. 

She shifted on the couch to settle in more snugly and, from this new angle, the office down the narrow hallway caught her eye. 

When she and Garrus signed the shareholders’ agreement on the apartment three years ago, there had been a mutual, if perhaps not well-voiced agreement that ‘the office’ would one day become ‘the nursery.’ It served mostly as Shepard’s place of work, when she wasn’t wining and dining possible political allies, but it also housed Garrus’ work space. His workbench, the various tools and equipment he needed to keep his rifle in prime condition and the finicky kitchen sink supplying hot water, took up the room. There was also a sleeper couch for any guest willing to share the cramped space— usually a former Normandy crew member and most often Jimmy Vega. 

They had painted it a pale mint upon Shepard’s suggestion, perhaps a bit more juvenile than the delicate robin’s egg and aquamarines that furnished the rest of the apartment. But no other accommodations were made for the barely mentioned idea of a nursery, except for one or two elusive conversations. 

Yet now the room seemed to whisper to her that it was missing its calling. That what she intended should come to pass.

But the undertaking seemed to drag her down like an undertow. Even the idea of engaging a lawyer and registering with adoption agencies was so overwhelming that her throat felt tight at the thought. 

Garrus wanted it so badly. She cut a quick look up to him from her agreeable position against his cowl and felt a fleeting smile despite herself as she watched the light of the vidscreen play on the startling blue of his eyes and reflective surface of his visor. 

She wanted it too. Oh, but how she wished she could give it to him. A little fawn fledgling with those eyes, nestled in his cowl, as her head was now. His hands would be just as gentle with it as they were in her hair this moment. 

She let herself happily fantasise the image she conjured for a moment until the bitterness of the knowledge that it couldn’t come to fruition eroded the picture. 

An idea, just then, swept through her like a gull on the horizon but flew off before it could be realised more deeply than a fleeting question. Instead, that sour acknowledgement seeped into other, more rooted speculation. Swirling eddies of fears swamped her in rapid succession like so many waves battering a defenceless shore. She felt helpless but to be submerged by them all. 

Suppose they would be denied a baby they became attached to because of concerns over her health or the ability to care for a child should it be a different species than her own? They would need help—how she hated that word—even Shepard had to accept that. Her love for a baby might be boundless but her energy was not. 

Would be it be fair to take in a child when she herself had limitations now? Would she be able to be present the way it would need her to be? She had made life-altering decisions for an entire galaxy, but could she do it for just one life?

Could she ever love anyone as much as she loved Garrus?

And in that whirlpool of worry, she even wondered where Vega would sleep when he had shore leave. 

Garrus must have noticed her fluttering heart or convulsive swallowing. His hand hadn’t left her hair all the while, but now there was a gentle, questioning tug to it. “You’re so quiet.” 

She could have let loose all those thoughts and fears, worries and concerns. Perhaps she should have. But she swallowed them down in a motion of clenching and unclenching her fists in her lap. Her voice was thicker than the sentiment she expressed truly deserved. “That’s an awful colour to paint a bathroom.”


	4. The Kitchen Sink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus fixes the kitchen sink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I going to have to begin to admit defeat. Health, health, health, quarantine, and school are not very conducive to writing. I have ten chapters done. I only have a few left. I have no idea when I'm going to finish this. I thank you all for reading and reviewing and sticking with me. Happy N7 Day! Let's hope for a remaster announcement in this shitty year!

“It would be expensive,” Shepard abruptly announced aloud. 

Garrus was half-hidden in the cabinet beneath the sink, one long, lean leg stretched out in the small space between the counter and the kitchen island, the other bent up in a pose that was so familiar, so strikingly nostalgic to the hours he spent underneath the Mako, that she couldn’t resist the urge to rub his leg affectionately just a few moments ago. A gesture she would have never executed on the SR1.

“Not really. Three, three-fifty, maybe.” He tapped his omni-wrench against the pipe he presumed was in question; a surprisingly melodic sound that she couldn’t appreciate without a grimace of discomfort. She was also in an attitude calling back to the SR1. Leaning against the cabinetry on the cool, tiled floor next to him, handing him the occasional nut or washer as she had so often sat against the Mako and handed him tools. Then she had listened to him complain about his job and family, but now she found herself being lectured about the finer points of millennia-old plumbing. She tried not to think about how he would have to haul her to her feet when they were done. How her back would ache all night, as it never had on the Normandy. But even the current twinge of pain would never diminish how much she enjoyed hearing him speak. 

They were so often in harmony, whether on the battlefield or in bed, choosing a vid or sharing a joke, that Shepard sometimes took it for granted that Garrus could almost read her thoughts. Reflexively, she looked up into the hallway. Though she couldn’t see the office from her spot against the cabinet doors, she felt its presence looming large. Something in the corner of her eye, a feeling she couldn’t shake off, a shadow that seemed to encroach no further than her thoughts.

She considered not clarifying her statement. Letting it tumble through the air like dandelion down, resting comfortably in the grass of misunderstanding, and with determined serenity, discuss replacing plumbing installed by a long-dead asari. But her reticence, which spurred so many conversations back on the SR1, more often fell victim to a newer, post-Alchera desire to share so many pent-up thoughts with Garrus. 

Still, Shepard hesitated, flipping the washer in her hand like a coin trick of old. “No. I meant a baby.”

He didn’t drop the omni-wrench or bang his fringe against the pipe or move in any way at all. He was so perfectly still, his breathing so calm and even that, despite her anxiety of voicing such a thought aloud, she could admire his sniper’s poise as she so often had in the past. The way impatient, impulsive Garrus had such fine control over his muscles and bones, vocals and breath. 

When he finally spoke, his metallic voice contained the same measured calm of his rangy limbs. “We have credits saved up.”

The washer winked and blinked as it disappeared and reappeared between her fingers. An old move she used to swipe credit chits a lifetime ago. She closed her hand around the piece of metal in a fist, shutting her mind from that dangerous path of thorny thoughts. 

Instead, she focused silently on that statement. Garrus had a head for figures far above her own, but she knew how much their cost of living had gone up since they moved to the Citadel. His job paid well and hers sufficed, but there was still a monthly barrage of medical bills, the mortgage and utilities, keeping a kitchen stocked full of dextro and levo foods, even their Rapid Transit passes raised eyebrows and drooped mandibles alike. Adoption was expensive and surrogacy was even more so. Yet, what she wouldn’t give for a fledging with his eyes. She would empty her credit account if only…

In her silence, Garrus had extricated himself from the confines of the cabinet and rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist. His gloves were filthy with grease and there was a smudge on his mandible. Before he stripped them off and tossed them aside on the dropcloth next to him, he set his omni-wrench down with the same consideration he gave his rifle. A muffled grunt followed as he settled himself next to her, one leg drawn up once more but the other, never completely healed from its tango with a Mako, stretched out stiffly before him. Now he said, “Talk to me.” It wasn’t a demand; it was a plea, laced with cautious yearning and trembling bravery. It was so hard for Garrus to believe in hope. 

She stared at her knuckles, bleached bone-white against the alabaster of her skin and felt the cold tile of the floor numbing her lower back into a faint ache. The words bubbled on her tongue, boiling over from her throat. It would be easier to say it all than keep it so tightly contained, lidded inside her body. She watched as his dusky hand eclipsed her pale one from sight and took a breath. 

“There are fees. To the agency, to lawyers, advertising, plus the birth mother if we go private.”

Garrus opened his mouth to speak but Shepard soldiered on as grimly as if she were working her way through a warehouse of lousy with mechs. 

“If we use a surrogate, there are even more. Psychological and medical care, screenings, testing for you, plus cold storage.”

They had never spoken of surrogacy before, but since the idea flew through her head that recently past night in front of the vidscreen, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. A baby, a fledging, a piece of Garrus to be born anew. She felt her breath coming faster, the words eager to spill forth with this revelation. She didn’t see his face briefly transform as he took it in. 

“We’d need help. I know we would. And I don’t mean Castis and Sol. We’d have to hire someone. And we’d need a bigger apartment at some point in the future. Especially if we chose to do it again. And I see how wonderful it is for you and Sol to have each other, so I would want that. But—”

Garrus had turned away from the cabinetry at some point and now he put two hands firmly on her shoulders. She saw how carefully his mandibles were schooled, how determined he was to have that stoic, expressionless façade that turians were famous for deploying. “Shepard. Hey. Look at me.”

She did. His eyes were so intensely blue that, no matter how familiar they were, still had the ability to take her breath away. But air seemed in short supply and she felt her heart beating with sickening thuds in her throat instead of the little fillip it was wont to do at the sight. 

“Do you want a baby? Yes or no?” There was the barest hint of a quaver in his subvocals, the slightest pinch to his mandibles, neither of which she would have noticed if she didn’t know every inch of him as thoroughly, as covetously as she did. 

She couldn’t say it. With a cautious start, she began, “There’s a lot to—"

He cut her off, pressing his forehead against hers, heedless of plumber’s grease. His mandibles twitched, impatient to flare in an arrogant grin. “We can make it work. The volus getting a Council seat has done some really great things for the stock market. Got some sweet tips.”

She couldn’t help it; she smiled at that confident drawl; his typical turian trust in the volus trading reports. His pomposity always lightened her heart and he knew it. “I wonder who you have to thank for that.” She would never take credit for their seat in public or even presume the entirety of it, but in the privacy of her kitchen she could allow for her hand in that success. 

He laughed easily, though her own throat still felt uncomfortably tight. “Some girl, I hear. She sounds impressive. Hope I meet her some day.” He sounded buoyant and exhilarated in a way that was uncommon to hear without a rifle in his hand and shattered targets in his wake. 

So she kissed him, despite the grease on his mandible, because it was so much better than taking away his rare optimism; so much easier than asking the last question still coiled in her stomach like the ouroboros, continuously feeding on its own fear. 

_Would I be a good mother?_


	5. Playing Hooky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus calls in sick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains sexual content. As with this entire fic, this chapter also deals with infertility and choices made therein. Reader discretion is advised.

The bedroom wasn’t cold. Far from it, considering how heavy-handed Garrus was with the thermostat. But it was so deliciously warm and comfortable beneath the sheets that Shepard was loath to move, much less get up. It wasn’t that she ached any more than usual nor was she particularly tired, but how decadent, how luxurious it was to lie in a soft, cosy bed next to the radiating, solid heat of her husband. 

“Don’t you want the shower first?” he asked as she burrowed closer to him. He had a way of sounding at once both amused and bemused by her behaviour, whether she was flaunting routine or proposing to go toe-to-toe with a Reaper. As though he was charmed by his inability to understand her motives or actions at times. 

“No,” she answered contently, without explanation. But as he started to move, whether it was to shrug his cowl or get out of bed, she wrapped her arms around his carapace and pleaded, her voice still soft and thick from sleep, “Don’t go. Stay home. Play hooky.”

Despite their translators and the additional apps Garrus installed to their omni-tools and his visor, there were still words she used that tripped him up. “Hooky?” he echoed, bewildered by the sound. She lifted her head from his cowl in time to see his visor’s interface whirling. A look of understanding lit his face, but he quickly schooled it into the hardened lines of a disillusioned C-Sec officer. “You mean you want,” and here he pitched his vocals low and suggestive, “Detective Vakarian?”

She burst out laughing, much to his chagrin. For all their efforts at it, both failed spectacularly at any attempts at role-play. He couldn’t stay in character and it always sent her into mirthful hilarity. Garrus once told her that, after a shared bottle of horosk, Victus had asked him if they ever dabbled in First Contact, well, contact. Shepard had the idea that Garrus never gave Victus a straight answer. “No, hook-ee,” she grinned, emphasising the last syllable with deliberate enunciation. Garrus’ mandibles fluttered in embarrassment at his mistake but she continued to smile, propping her chin on his bare carapace. “Haven’t you ever called in sick?”

Garrus brushed her messy hair out of her eyes and missed the point by a mile. “But I’m not sick.”

Shepard lifted her eyebrows, incredulous but not disbelieving. For all his talk of being a bad turian, Garrus could be as dutiful and diligent as his father. Shepard was wise enough to never point this out, however. Instead, she asked, “You’ve really never skipped a day of work just because?” He shook his head and she inched up the bed so that her silk nightgown caught on the edges of his plated carapace. “Come on. Stay in bed.” Her mouth was near his aural canal. “I’ll make it worth your while, Officer Vakarian.”

He rolled over on his side so that they were face to face as he admonished her for stripping him of rank. “Detective. And how do you plan to do that?”

She smiled again, a slow sly one that matched the soft trail her finger made along his cowl. “I can cook you breakfast and bring it to you in bed.”

“Sounds messy,” he countered with darkening eyes. His talons fingered the hem of her short chemise. 

She hummed, a poor imitation of the kind of rich and resonant vibrations he could make. “We could rent a skycar for the day and take a drive.” Her fingers found a familiar gap in the plate between his cowl and carapace. 

Garrus disguised the noise he made, a delighted outrush of air, into one of exaggerated comprehension. “You want me to call in sick so I can land in the nearest hospital instead.” His hand had slipped underneath the silk and skimmed her thigh. 

Their faces were so close that they shared the same breath. She closed the distance between them, but didn’t kiss him. Instead, she whispered against his firmer mouth, “You can drive.”

He covered her body with his, scrambling to pull her slip off as it caught on his hands and tugged, trapped between their bodies. She gently pushed him up so she could draw it off more easily. “Pulling out the big guns here, Shepard.”

Shepard tossed her chemise somewhere off to the side, momentarily forgotten in the twist of bedsheets and blankets. Her arms pulled him back to her. “Come on. It’ll be fun. I promise.”

He kissed the smile off her face. “Promises, promises.”

But there was something desperate in Garrus movements; the way his talons gripped Shepard’s flesh. As though she might slip through his fingers, insubstantial as fog. She knew why. Those long, restless nights of dreams he faced where she burned bright, where she didn't turn, where she didn’t come back. If he laid a heavy arm across her waist in the early morning hours before they rose, she understood. She had them too. Where she arrived on Omega too late and his navy blood seeped through her fingers and soaked her armour through to the skin. Where his shields failed on the Collector Base and the light left his blue, blue eyes. 

She grasped his face with a gasp and he looked at her, as he always did, with some element of dubiety, as though he weren’t certain she would be there when he lifted his lids from a momentary blink. He who had so much faith in her couldn’t overcome this one doubt. 

She tried to make him believe that she was there with her lips and teeth and tongue. She tried to quell his apprehension with her hands and fingers and nails. But even after, as they lay with trembling limbs and hastened breaths, with his forehead pressed to her shoulder, she felt his questioning terror like a cold miasma invading, poisoning their sheltered cocoon of warmth. 

When at last he pulled away and stumbled through an apologetic message to his assistant at the office, she tried to smile at the way he made awkward excuses to escape outright lying. But something chill touched her heart. 

Promises, promises. 

He said it to tease; he said it to goad, but he also said it with an element of sincerity. She had made him a promise in London, one she intended to keep. There were no stories where one outsmarted death for long and certainly none without cost. If this life they built together was borrowing against the time she had stolen, she would make the most of it. She would step off that ledge and into the chasm of unknown. 

If they had a child, he would never be alone. 

She knew it wasn’t the right reason— or perhaps it shouldn’t be the main reason they should do it— but as she watched his mandibles move in a familiar, sheepish gesture, she also knew it was the only one that wouldn’t leave her gnawing with doubt. She didn’t know if she would be a good mother, if she even deserved to have the privilege of being one, but she knew that she wanted it for them as badly as she wanted this life with Garrus. She wanted to open this beautiful world she created with him to another life. One that they together could infuse with the love they shared. A life that, even if they did not create, was shaped by that love. She had taken that risk in the main battery all those years ago and she would do it again now. 

Shepard shifted impatiently in the sheets as he disconnected the call. Her heart beat so quickly that she saw spots dance before her eyes as he climbed back into bed. 

“What?” Garrus asked suddenly, not quite settled in. 

She didn’t even pause for air, as she hadn’t in the Crucible. She knew then and she knew now. “Let’s do it.”

Shepard thought she would have to clarify that sudden statement but it seemed the same topic that had been preying on her mind was also dwelling in his thoughts. His face, his eyes, dawned with immediate understanding. He pulled her to him, for once heedless of her back. She laughed breathlessly as he pressed his warm forehead to hers. “Really? You’re sure?”

She would never, ever forget the joy, the gratitude, the unspeakable love in the blue flames of his eyes as she—for once— said, “Definitely.”


	6. Pesach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy learns to make a few new dishes and offers some advice along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for sitting February out, but this chapter takes place over Passover and I simply couldn't post it outside the month of the holiday. I hope you're all doing well! I'm fully vaccinated, up to my ears in Edward II and Edward IV, and very near to done with this story! So hang in there everyone! And, a very early L'Shanah Tovah!

“That the fish meatloaf?” Vega asked with a glance at the mixing bowl Shepard’s hands were submerged in. He had just shouldered his massive muscles past Shepard in the narrow confines of the galley kitchen and now reached for the fridge door.

Shepard felt the brief urge to smile, but the roots of anxiety that coiled in her gut smothered the tendril of humour before it could blossom on her lips. Instead, she took up the exaggerated tone of patience one uses with a mischievous toddler. “It’s not fish meatloaf. It’s gefilte fish.”

Unification Day fell on the same day as the first night of Passover that year, giving new meaning to 'why this night is different from all other nights.’ She was only thankful the two holidays hadn’t been burdened with her birthday as well. Instead, that was today, two days before the Seder and Unification feast. Vega, citing ‘serious Spectre business,’ was crashing on Shepard and Garrus’ convertible couch and lending a much-needed hand in the kitchen.

Vega grabbed an enormous bowl of the matzo ball mixture that had been chilling in the fridge with one hand and a bottle of water with the other. He, Garrus, and Shepard had celebrated her birthday the previous night at a popular sushi restaurant where she, predictably, ordered chicken teriyaki, and her husband and friend dined on raw fish and alcohol. While teasing her about being allowed inside any sushi joint in the first place, they both imbibed quite a bit. Needless to say, Garrus and Vega had sunken eyes and pounding headaches after their debauched night while Shepard had walked away relatively unscathed. Though not entirely. Wasabi had a way of reminding her of Akuze. The vibrant green of the relish recalled the virulent acid thresher maws spewed and the fifty brave souls lost on that operation.

She didn’t share these thoughts with either her friend or her husband, however. Instead, she fretted over whether the order she placed weeks in advance for pike, carp, and whitefish would actually come through. Acquiring fish on the Citadel had been difficult before the war. It was almost impossible now. And why had she chosen this year— so fraught with stress and the pressure of cooking and hosting two holidays in one night— to make gefilte fish from scratch when it was so readily available in cans, jars, and freezer packs? She remained more than unusually quiet throughout the night, though Garrus and Vega had tried their best to draw her out with jokes and tall tales, carefully avoiding reminiscing about their past adventures together. Garrus especially knew her well enough to sense when talking about ‘old times’ should be avoided and Jimmy followed suit.

Now she was wrist-deep in three different kinds of fish and oddly thankful for the distraction of cooking the day away. She and Garrus had filled out every scrap of paperwork (Garrus had a habit of announcing ‘one less to worry about!’ after he finished form after form, slowly turning Shepard’s adoring amusement to irate irritation) for the adoption agency three months ago and still they hadn’t heard a whisper of a word. Her heart sped up every time she heard a high priority alert from her omni-tool and Garrus’ impatience with waiting idly by for their future kept them both in a tense state of wary alertness.

It was the helplessness that ate at them both like that maw’s acid had devoured her armour so many years ago. Both she and Garrus were so used to taking fate and twisting it to their will by sheer force of determination and dogged stubbornness. Waiting for other people to do this for them, especially something as important, as life-changing as this, was a feat neither of them knew how to accomplish. Even the act of watching vids on the couch together could become fraught with apprehension; entwined hands disengaging to scroll distractedly through their omni-tools. It wasn’t that anything was wrong between them; it was that neither could sit with their anxiety.

Vega hadn’t commented on this sometimes tense atmosphere during his stay. But she felt his dark brown eyes on her profile as he gulped his water and motioned to her mixing bowl with the half-empty bottle. “It’s ground fish, right?”

She looked down at the small loaves she was forming with her hands, considering the size and shape of each vessel. “Yes.”

Vega waved that water bottle at the ingredients lining the countertop. “And eggs and onions, salt and pepper, and breadcrumbs?”

“Well, matzo meal,” Shepard conceded, carefully lowering a compacted mound of said ingredients into a pot of boiling fish stock.

She saw his self-satisfied grin out of the corner of her eye. “It’s fish meatloaf.”

This time, she did smile, and with it she felt that knot of anxiety loosen its vice **-** like grip on her gut. _Kishkas_ , as her father called it. ‘ _I’m eating my_ kishkas _out here waiting.’_ Passover always reminded her of her father. He cooked a Seder fit for the kings and queens they were supposed to imitate those first two nights, reclining on cushions while they ate. It seemed like half the building would fill their tiny apartment to partake in both food and traditions of her ancestors, even if those neighbours themselves did not share their background. Celebrating Passover this way, inviting not just family but friends of different faiths and backgrounds and even species, made her feel especially close to her father. As though she were honouring his memory the same way she did on Yom Kippur and his Yahrzeit, when she lit a candle and recited the Kaddish. That feeling she had in the moments after she said _amein,_ where she could almost sense her father in the same room. As if she spun around quickly enough, she would catch a glimpse of his quicksilver grin.

The memory of that grin made her own smile deepen as she teased, “Don’t you eat fish tacos?”

Vega looked both offended and horrified as she washed her hands in soapy water, cleaning bits of fish and matzo meal out from underneath her short nails. “Oh, no no no! Not the same thing,” he protested heartily as the second pot on the stove, this one filled with water, came to a rolling boil.

Shepard dried her hands and stood beside him, plunging her fingers into the matzo ball mixture. “If you say so,” she allowed, still smiling. “Now, how about you pay for your stay on that comfortable sofa bed and help me make matzo balls?”

After Vega watched Shepard shape a few and roll them in _schmaltz,_ he settled into forming the neat, round balls himself. “I hear this place is gonna get crowded.” He said it casually enough but Shepard, her mind forever preoccupied with the intended resident of the room he now slept in, was made cautious. She and Garrus had only told Castis and Solana of their adoption plans thus far. It wasn’t that they doubted their friends would be happy for them; it was superstitious dread that sharing the news would cause the whole endeavour to fail.

The balls appeared dwarfed in Vega’s huge hands, but they matched up with the ones Shepard dropped into the pot. “What do you mean?” She, in turn, attempted to match his nonchalance.

Vega didn’t seem suspect of anything but the matzo ball in his hand. He frowned and added a bit more of the batter to the one he was shaping. “Well, how many people you having? Scars’ folks and Krios’ kid and Miranda’s bangin’ sister. Who else?”

Vega tried to swallow his grin, but like a naughty boy who also seeks the attention of an elder, he smirked before ducking his head. Shepard chose not to scold him aloud for objectifying Oriana. She _was_ gorgeous. Even Garrus noticed her and he usually only had an eye for the turian ladies. But she did shoot him a frosty look. “Joker and Oona are coming too, but they may be late. Their transport doesn’t get in until fourteen hundred.”

Vega whistled low and loud. “It’s gonna be packed, is all I’m sayin’. What’d you think I meant?”

Shepard flicked a glance up, but Jimmy still seemed sincerely curious as opposed to suspiciously so. She shook her head and carried the empty bowl to the sink. The hot water sputtered and, for a moment, she envisioned a frantic call to Garrus’ office, where he was up to his fringe in planning security for Victus’ Unification Day speech. Thankfully, the water ran steamy and clear. “Nothing.”

Vega didn’t seem to know what to do with his dirty, sticky hands as Shepard washed hers. He tried to cross his arms and then appeared to think better of it. “Y’know, that advice you gave me, about handling the Council like my best friend’s sister? Respectful an’ charming but not flirty? It’s really working. Got ‘em eatin’ out of the palm of my hand.”

Shepard wiped her hands dry and stepped aside for Vega to use the sink. She thought, with a mixture of wistfulness and fondness of the angry but devoted Jimmy of the _Normandy_ SR-2, who knew his mentor had feet of clay but followed her faithfully despite this realisation. Of his presumptive N7 tattoo and how proud she had been when he graduated with that honour. “I knew you could do it. You’ve got a good head on those deltoids.”

“Shit, Lola. You’re gonna make a good mom, y’know.”

She was putting the eggs back in the fridge when he said it, so earnestly that her eyes stung. Vega wasn’t stupid, though people made the assumption more than once based on his brawn and grammar. He was a survivor, like she was, of the hard-knock schooling the streets of Earth provided and the bitter knowledge of loss learned on alien soil. He could read people, the way she could, with that education taught of adversity. She blinked a few times before shutting the door of the fridge. “Thanks, Jimmy.”

He waved her off, as though embarrassed by the candour they had just shared. “Anytime.” And then, though it was only morning, he uttered the words that cemented what a long day her forty-first birthday would be. “So hey, are these matzo balls supposed to be sinkin’ like rocks?”


End file.
